


Audit No. D2017SP-000157.000 - Stargate Program

by en_shaedn



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen, POV First Person, Self-Insert, Sort Of, and pay your contractors on time, kick butt go to space represent the human race, outside pov, that program costs billions you cannot tell me someone did not try to audit that sucker, the behind the scenes paperwork crew that exists back there
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-19 15:05:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11900247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/en_shaedn/pseuds/en_shaedn
Summary: Every program in the Department of Defense gets an audit eventually. Even the ones with aliens.





	1. The Introduction: No One Is Actually Introduced To Anyone, Really

I doodled some more on my notepad as my boss kept talking. They were some dang good doodles, if I say so myself: a few horses and a cartoon crocodile coexisted on some kind of rocky cliff, and an abstract something or other slowly crawled its way up the side of the page. Lana had opened the supply cupboard for me last week and I had used the opportunity to snag a few notebooks while I had the chance; billions upon billions of dollars spent in the Department of Defense, but their Inspector General employees could only occasionally access office supplies. Amazing. The pens were apparently pretty cool though. I had my doubts. Supposedly, they’re built to be able to serve as an emergency tracheotomy instrument, if needed, and write a mile, and yadda yadda. Mostly they write like you’re on the verge of inkless-ness; I had never stabbed anyone in the throat with them to find out if they worked as advertised. I wondered how the contractor who sold them would product test that kind of thing. I wondered if the contractor sold their general inability to write as preserving ink. That would appeal to an agency against fraud, waste and abuse. Of course, the pens don’t write properly, and no one uses them. That’s government contracting for you. I always pick up a box of gel pens from Walmart to write with, but I had forgotten to grab them on my way out this morning. 

My boss stopped talking, and I stopped thinking vaguely about pens and started speaking to the room at large, reading off my newly decorated notepad. Updates on what the division was doing (energy and weapons system contracting, as had been the case for the last two years); how the high profile Congressional request was going (badly, because SOCOM dragged their heels past three different milestones and then claimed that everything in the report was classified under FOIA exemptions 2, 4, 5, 7, and 9, which was ridiculous, since only 7 could MAYBE apply and there weren’t even any wells involved – the lawyers were duking that one out, and were happy to do it); and an update on how many employees we had and whether we would meet the employee cap by the end of the fiscal year (no). The usual. 

My boss and I had gone first in this briefing, and it took another half hour for all the agency heads to finish briefing the Acting IG. Still not sure why he hadn’t been made the official IG; Inspectors General are usually exempt from the political maneuvering that goes on at the upper levels of government, so he should have been confirmed when the new President took office. He wasn’t, unfortunately. I liked the guy. He was solid.

When he dismissed us, I moved to close my book and head out the door to meet my buddy Doug in DCIS, who had cheerfully informed the table this morning that DCIS netted another three admirals last week in the Glenn Defense case. The bastard. I didn’t get very far before Ms. Carmichael, my boss, called my name in that polished tone of hers. You never quite realize how your name sounds until someone like her says it. 

“Jordan,” she said, and I got an awful feeling about my future prospects of not being assigned to a stupid project, “Mr. Far needs to speak with you.” Yeah. Okay. I had no context for the IG wanting to talk to me; therefore, it was probably bad. Still, that’s life. Ms. Carmichael pulled me over to Mr. Far, who had not left his seat, and we did that thing that you do with someone to whom you’ve spoken but you don’t know well: said hi, talked about his favorite college basketball team, all that. Ms. Carmichael left. Alright then. That was weird; usually there’s more than one person around when you meet with someone like the IG. It’s a protocol thing.

“Jordan- Can I call you Jordan? – Jordan, there’s an audit that’s come up the chain to us, and it’s classified as far as it goes. You’re TS-SCI certified, correct?” He wouldn’t ask if he didn’t already know I had a security clearance, and you don’t get as high as I did around here without one, so I nodded and waited for him to continue. “This is probably going to be the biggest audit of your career.” Aren’t they all? “Have you been on any of our Afghanistan tours, or to Qatar?” 

“Yes sir. I did four deployments to Afghanistan, with our contingency operations division, and two to Qatar. That was when I was a project manager though, so it’s been a few years. Is this audit over there?” If so, we had auditors permanently stationed there, so I didn’t know why he would need me to go; it might be stepping on some toes. The DoD IG wasn’t as territorial as the military we oversaw, but we still had our pride.

“No. In fact, you’ll be going to Colorado Springs. But I ask because there’s the same level of risk or more involved as in Afghanistan, and the same requirements for civilians in the case of emergencies.” I stared at him.

“In Colorado Springs? What the- What do they have up in Peterson that’s so dangerous?” It could be Schriever AFB, I supposed, but I doubt it. Most everything we audit of any interest in Colorado Springs is up in Peterson. NORAD and USNORTHCOM had a significant presence up in Cheyenne Mountain, and the Army ran things out of Carson, but Peterson was the big one up there. 

“You’ll be briefed when you get up there, and it’s Cheyenne Mountain. I know we don’t usually do things this way, but Colonel Morrison informs me that you’re pretty flexible. And open minded. You’ll need both. Before I send you though, I need to know that you’re willing to accept the danger; you’ll be eligible for hazard pay for as long as it takes.”  
Well. Who was I to say no to adventure? Or at least hazard pay.  
____

I returned to my office, discarded my notepad on the desk next to my plants, stuck my access card in my laptop, and waited for it to load the generic lock screen. I pulled up the Cheyenne Mountain base site, and opened a lync screen. Our office skype wasn’t the best, but since the floor was secure and we weren’t supposed to have our phones, it would have to do; I sent good morning messages to a few of my team, and requested status updates on our projects. The DLA audit was coming along, the ESPC audit was floundering, and the EPA audit was a hot mess. So no change from yesterday. The NORAD site wasn’t loading on chrome, so I grimaced, groaned, and pulled up Explorer. Government employees must be some of the last people in the world that use the stupid thing for anything other than downloading another browser.

While I waited for the screen to load, Christopher walked into my office. With his stupid smart water. I glared at him, not that he paid attention.  
“I see you brought your stupid water today. Like always.”

“Good morning to you too, sunshine. How’s the young person today? Cheerful as ever?” Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Morrison was a big ball of sunshine wrapped up in a six-foot frame, dark skin, and that ugly Army uniform. He was several years older than me, and most of our conversations were-

“Well, some of us aren’t mere inches away from dying, or contracting senility, so I’m pretty good old man.” I grinned at him. I am incapable of being annoyed, angry, or aggravated at Christopher. 

“You’re inches away from death, you keep talking like that.”

“I bet I could take you.” He eyed me doubtfully. “Fine. I bet I could push you in front of oncoming traffic and make it look like an accident.”

He rolled his eyes, and scoffed, and mimed being stabbed through the heart. All very theatrical. “If I die, I’m haunting you until you feel bad,” he threatened cheerfully.  
“You’ll be around a while, then. I bet you’ll get bored.” 

“Nah, you’ll have feelings one day. They’re an incurable disease. I have faith you will be infected. Either that or you’re an alien and you’ll live forever, and that would be interesting, so. You know.” He gave me a fist bump, and then, instead of leaving after our morning banter, he closed the door and sprawled in one of my guest chairs. I stared at him. 

“This is about that audit, right? The one you told Far I would be good for.” I abandoned the NORAD site, because here was a much more useful source. Also, it wasn’t loading, because government websites suck. “What is it? Can you tell me?”

Christopher fiddled with the cap on his smart water. “Look,” he said, “I was stationed in Cheyenne before I came here, okay.” I opened my mouth, and he said, “Zip it smarty pants, I know I tell everyone I ran an NSA facility. And that’s true. I just had a stint in Cheyenne between the NSA and Bagram. It’s pretty classified. There’s a lot of money going into the mountain though, and some Congress-people in the know want some kind of oversight, you feel me? Grassley and that crew. And by a lot of money, I mean the program’s running up into the billions at this point.”

“So they’re definitely running something other than training and deep space telemetry in there, huh.” I muttered to myself to think, but I knew he wouldn’t reply. As of now, I couldn’t know anything; I wouldn’t be able to until I got there. I looked at him. “So why not get one of the nuclear program folks to handle it? ISPA? Even SPO, really, it might be under their purview.”

“A few reasons. I recommended you, and my word carried a lot of weight in this case, since I worked there.” His slow Alabama accent matched his wink perfectly, the flirt. “But I recommended you because you’re a pretty good shot, you roll with ridiculous things, and you’re flexible when it comes to finishing the mission instead of following the rules, and knowing when someone made the right call.” He shrugged, and he fiddled some more with his water cap; I hadn’t seen him this fidgety for a long time. “I told Mr. Far that, and it came down to you and one of the auditors in ISPA. But the ISPA guy’s former military, and we want it to be very clear that the results of this audit aren’t colored by favoritism to old friends or the uniform.”

“Okay, I suppose that makes…some sense.” I made a face. Some sense, but still very odd. “Why would me being a good shot have anything to do with an audit? How dangerous is this, exactly, because I certainly didn’t have to shoot when I went to the Middle East.”

“Never know. Better to have it than not.” Christopher stuck the cap on his water and stood up. “When you get there, you’ll probably want to scream at someone about the whole thing. Feel free to call whenever.” He smiled at me, opened the office door, and sauntered out. 

Ridiculous.


	2. Chapter 2: In Which No One Is Happy In The Morning, Including The Morning Person

I stood in the airport and tried hard not to be cranky. Sometimes, though, the best of intentions couldn’t get me through a meeting with this team, even on bluetooth. And they had brought their equally frustrating lawyer. I stood in line at the airport Starbucks and listened to the lawyer, Ay-hole Jackson (not to be confused with Okay-ish Jackson, who was also a lawyer and not actively a jerk), argue with one of the newer auditors on the team about whether an infrastructure survey fulfilled competitive procedure requirements. She hadn’t yet lost her enthusiasm for a fight; it was tiring at six in the morning. 

I decided I probably wasn’t required in the conversation for at least another five minutes, and stuck them on mute. I ordered a black coffee when I got to the front of the line; such a rip off. Starbucks was a pain, and also the only place I could get coffee for the next three hours, so I would suck it up, pay the exorbitant prices, and deal. The boy at the counter asked me if I wanted cream and sugar as in my ear, the auditor explained to the lawyer that nowhere in the law does it actually define competitive procedures, and that it was left to the discretion of the Secretaries concerned as to what those entailed. I contemplated dying, and how convenient it would be right now, told the kid I did not in fact want cream and sugar, and paid for my coffee. The lawyer rebutted that while that might be the case, auditors were allowed to use professional judgement to determine what was acceptable. I paused in putting the lid on my coffee and inserted myself in the conversation again. 

“Look, Jackson, if you want us to write a memo or a report to the Director of Navy REPO about this so they rewrite the law, you need to put your opinion in writing.” I put the blessed mute button back on as Jackson hemmed and hawed; lawyers only write opinions for you if you sat on them, and sometimes not even then. 

The meeting – which, god, I shouldn’t even be on! These people weren’t my team! – wrapped up pretty quick after that. Hallelujah. I stared at my paper coffee cup and wished for a dog to scratch. Dogs made everything better. Really, mornings were usually okay; I got in at 5:30 on an average day, and had a few hours of quiet to myself. Well, once I got my own office, that is; when I had been a junior auditor, a woman named Liz sat in one of the cubes behind me and called her friends or her husband or her kids at 6 in the morning. I didn’t miss those days.

No, the real problem now was that I had no idea what I was getting into, really. And I had gotten the short shaft today in seating. My ticket was for a center seat. 

Really it was the seat thing.

What can you do.

I sipped my coffee and scrolled through my phone, looking at the website for Cheyenne Mountain and NORAD, which loaded perfectly, of course. They didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know: the government was bad at designing mobile layouts, if they bothered to make the effort; the public face of NORAD and Cheyenne was apparently at least in part a pack of lies; and whoever designed the site for Cheyenne Mountain hadn’t remembered to add a sub-title on the page itself. Classic. None of these things were particularly surprising.

Other than these incredibly useful pieces of information and what Christopher had told me, I didn’t know anything at all. Well, not strictly true. I had been informed by Mr. Far before I left that I would be signing approximately 83 NDAs. Which was fine, I didn’t need my wrist, I guess. I wondered idly if I could file disability if I got carpal tunnel signing NDAs, or if that was a right I had signed away when I got my clearance; I didn’t recall reading it, but then the fine print had been pretty small.  
When the attendants called my flight 15 minutes later, I put my phone away, drank the dregs of my coffee, and stepped into the unknown. Well. Into some plane on the tarmac at Reagan next to a fat guy. But it was practically similar.

\----

The flight had been pretty painless, all told, though the baggage claim had been the same stampede of humanity as ever off a red-eye. I snagged my suitcase off the carousel and lugged it for the doors; I was looking forward to some fresh air. I pulled out my work phone once I got outside. Three emails, two of which wanted me to do something. I was on TDY out of the state, I could answer emails later. God’s gift to auditor-kind, was TDY. The third was from someone named Siler; I opened that one, since it didn’t look like a traffic notice or yet another memo that the internal file systems were down.

Siler’s email informed me that a car would be waiting for me outside my terminal. I blinked down at the outdated Blackberry. Usually, I would just get a taxi, and I had been to Cheyenne Mountain before, but okay. I could deal. 

I only had to look through the crowd for a minute or two before I saw a sign with my name on it, held by a short man in an Air Force uniform. Alright then. I nodded at him, he nodded at me, and we met in the middle. All very civilized. 

I surveyed the man; it was mutual. I saw a Master Sergeant, a little sleepy looking, glasses. He didn’t smell bad and he didn’t look like he hated my guts on sight, which at this point in my career was sufficient. He finished looking me over and stuck out his hand. “Ms. Sabo?”

I grinned at him, a bit, and waved my hand – occupied with my Blackberry and my carry-on – at him. My other hand held my suitcase. No handshakes to be had here, at the moment. “It’s more of a ‘z’ sound. Szabo.” I transferred my horrible phone into my bag, and grabbed his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sgt. Siler.” Firm handshake. Good.  
After the usual pleasantries – good morning, how was your flight, thanks for coming – we walked to the Sergeant’s car. It was, of course, government issue. Even had the “For Official Use Only” plates and everything. 

“You know Sergeant,” I said as I threw my suitcase in the trunk, “I could have taken a taxi and met you on base. Not that I don’t appreciate the ride, or anything. I’m just wondering.” 

“You’re the first auditor we’ve had out here, Ms. Szabo.” He pronounced it right, this time. My Blackberry chimed in my bag; I must have forgotten to turn off the sound. Whoops. 

“I decided to meet you before you get on base.”

“Get a feel for the land and all that?” I grinned at him a little, but I already knew it was my “okay I get it, we all know the IG is not welcome here, you don’t have to pretend this hard” look. Well, I tried. Oh well.

“Sure.” He smiled at me; his look didn’t look quite so well-worn as my own version of the customer service face, but yeah. Auditors weren’t welcome here. Well. Hopefully they would have decent coffee on base. I could tell I was gonna need it. 

\----

Jack O’Neill glared at his coffee. It was relatively inoffensive, and looked…fine, which could be bad, since it had just shown up at his elbow and who knew who brought it or what they could have done to it. Not him; he certainly didn’t. Know or bring it. Carter could have put some salt in it for revenge for the last time he messed up an experiment in her lab, not that it was his fault he needed rescuing right at that time; he’d try to consider her data points next time he was abducted by sentient plants. Or Daniel could be grouchy about something or other he said about anthropology, and who knew what he might do to an innocent cup of coffee to even the score. So yeah, Jack stared at the coffee. It was too early for this and his brain didn’t need to be on yet, so coffee it was. Coffee. Cofffffeeeee. Kind of a weird word, coffee. Came from Arabic. Very pretty language, but-

Carter threw a pencil into his earlobe. Jack yelped and transferred his glare from the coffee cup to her; she rolled her eyes. “Sir, it’s just coffee. From the mess. I brought it. It’s fine.” Damn, she was psychic. 

Considering everything that went on around here, that was less of a joke that it would have been, once upon a time. Jack gave this thought due consideration as he slugged back the cup. 

“So why am I here at 7:30, Carter? Remind me.” Carter glared at him. Ha. Got her. No one should be this composed this early if they weren’t in a warzone. 

“The auditor, sir. She’s coming today. You remember? We’ve had at least three briefings where she was mentioned, an email, a memo, multiple conversations? Her?” Hoo boy, someone wasn’t thrilled the auditors were in the house. And sure, Jack remembered. 

Not that he read his email, if they weren’t marked urgent; he must be at least three years behind on all his mandatory training. Whatever would he do without the reasonable accommodation training? How could he possibly do his job without knowing what types of desk chair he could apparently get the government to pay for if his back hurt? The Air Force certainly didn’t know how he did it; they kept sending emails about it. So yeah, he didn’t read emails anymore. Or take surveys. 

The memo…that one he must have genuinely missed. 

But the IG coming to town? That had been the talk of the SGC for the last month. And of the actual command team, though nothing had been finalized yet. 

“Morning Jack, Sam.” Daniel wandered in the room, looking both half asleep and half lost. No one really liked the mornings around here, it seemed. He clutched a cup of coffee, probably at least half sugar and cream, in his hand, and…a rock in the other.

“Oh yeah her. Morning Daniel. You and your rock having a good time over there?” Daniel had slumped in his seat, staring at the featureless grey of the briefing room table as if it held a Rosetta Stone to help him translate his rock. 

“No. Hey Jack, why is there only one person coming? Didn’t you say the IG works in teams?” Jack stared at him.

“Seriously Daniel? The auditor? Start with the rock instead. No one wants to talk about our personal IRS people.”

Daniel blinked, shoving his glasses up his face with the hand that held the rock. “IRS? I still don’t know how this works. You don’t pay them anything, do you?”

Jack grinned at the resident linguist. “You were at the same meetings I was. And there was a memo. And some emails. Didn’t you read them?” 

Daniel stared at him with all the dignity available to a man who was still holding the rock. “I don’t read emails from here if they aren’t marked urgent.”

Jack glanced at Carted out of the corner of his eye. She had on her poker face. Fine, spoil sport.

“Nah, the IG comes in and tells you if you’re running things according to the RULES. If you aren’t, they write nasty reports, and Congress reads them, and tries to shut you down. We don’t pay them anything." He thought for a second, then tried again. "I mean, the government pays them, because they’re DoD civilians. We don’t. But they’re like the IRS anyway. No one is happy when they show up, and they’re intrusive. Now explain the rock.”

“They found it on P3X-713. It has some hieroglyphics that look pretty promising, they mention something about an energy source. I’ve been here all night translating. But Jack, only one person is coming? This base’ll eat her alive.”

Carter looked up from the report she was typing on her computer. “Maybe she’s been given the equivalent of punishment detail? There must be something else though. She’s doing a quick contract audit, right?" Sam glanced at the men; they looked at her blankly. She very pointedly did not roll her eyes and continued. "On the iris. Someone whistleblew on the contractor. There wouldn’t really be a reason for her to come here and be read on to the whole program; you could look at the iris on paper and probably answer whatever questions you need without ever stepping foot on this base. I wonder if Maybourne or the CIA are muscling in. Or someone else.” She turned to Jack. “Sir, do you know anything about this? Has General Hammond told you anything?” The look was very clear. She knew full well he knew something, and he was going to spill. Jack took a gulp of his coffee and smiled his most charming smile.

She did not look charmed. She looked grumpy. Fine.

“Yeah, I know something. But we’ll see if it works out. We have to meet her first, and then we’ll go from there.”

Carter subsided, rolled her eyes at him, and went back to her report. Which was probably on a subject he could only understand with three Ph.Ds. Daniel, on the other hand, wasn’t bound by the chain of command, and stared at him over his coffee cup. 

“Leave it Daniel. It will all become clear with time.”

Daniel stared at him. “I’ve always found it very impressive how you manage to keep a straight face and make all those wavy hand motions like they actually do anything for a conversation.”

Carter laughed at them both.


	3. In Which People Are Finally Introduced

I turned off my phones – my personal and my work phone – and handed them to the guards at the entryway to be locked in the phone dungeon until I came back. When I had first started working for the Inspector General’s Office, multiple bosses and at least five reorganizations ago, I had been able to have my cell phone in the suite with me. Probably a year after I started, that had changed because woohoo classified information, and so we all had to adhere to the new security rules. Which were mostly to leave your phone in the little lockboxes that were oh-so-helpfully provided at the entrance to the workspace. This all felt very familiar. 

Siler was waiting for me; he had tossed his phone to one of the guards and strolled on through the gate without a care in the world. Me, I had to sign in, state my business, verify I wasn’t bringing anything dangerous on the base, all the things you need to do to enter a foreign country. Or a museum in DC, I guess. Siler told me to leave my bags with the guards, too, which I’ll admit was a first, but whatever. They stuffed the bag in a locker, too. 

Once I got through the metal detector, Siler and I started walking. “They told you this is mostly underground, right?” He didn't look at me when he spoke. I looked at him.

“I’m claustrophobic.” He didn’t look moved, so I shrugged. Point him. “Kidding. Yes, they told me. That, and not too much else. Anything you want to share?” This was bad etiquette, I know, but I was dying of curiosity. And people don’t usually mind if you ask questions. Although I’ve met some people, real jerks, you just wonder how they function in life without someone hauling off and punching them. Siler, fortunately, was at least not a giant jerk.

He smiled at me, politely. Everything the man did was polite. “Not at this time, ma’am.” Not particularly nice, but not a jerk. Good enough.

And all this time, we walked; as if to punctuate his statement, we abruptly stopped at an elevator. It was…an elevator. For once, though, we were starting from the top floor, not the bottom. I glanced at Siler when we got in, smiled at the pair of guards at the elevator – number 11 and 12 from the gate to here, I had counted – and waited to meet my fate. How exciting.

\---------------------------

When the conference room door opened on Sgt. Siler and the SGC’s personal piranha, Jack was diligently filling out paperwork. Hey, score! Good first impression for once. Usually his first impressions involved more explosions. Not that the auditor would know that he was doing actual work instead of fooling around on Pocket Tanks, since everything was on computer now, but whatever. It counted.

 

And it was probably better than Daniel, who had moved on to muttering to himself while he stared at his rock and messed with his tablet. Jack wasn’t sure when the tablet had arrived; probably Daniel had made a side trip on one of his two coffee runs. The last coffee run he had brought back the pot from his office, so probably that one. Sam, of course, was still diligently writing whatever it was she was writing, and barely looked up when the door opened.

 

Siler nodded to the three of them, nodded to the auditor, and bowed out of the room. The door closed behind him with a faint, but very definitive click. That click would be going places, if clicks could go places. Ha. Jack bet the click would go several klicks.  
Anyway.

 

He looked at the woman sitting down on one side of the conference room table. Close to the door, facing most of the table, slightly to the right of the head seat. She set her bag down and met his eyes. 

 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Colonel.” Her handshake was firm. “I’m Jordan Szabo.” 

 

“Jack O’Neill. Two Ls.” She nodded. 

 

“It’s Szabo with a Z.” Ah. Commiserating. Establishing bonds with the locals, gaining inroads. Well, they’d see how that-

 

“Oh! Is that Polish?” The merest hint of linguistics had been enough to pull Daniel out of his rock trance and back to the land of the living. “Hi, sorry, I’m Daniel Jackson. Polish surname?”

 

Ms. Szabo seemed willing enough to talk to a frazzled academic at eight in the morning, which Jack mentally tallied as a point in her favor. “Yes, my father’s family emigrated from Poland when he was a child. Do you have family there?” Daniel’s face prompted her to explain. “Most people don’t call it until they’ve had personal experience.”

 

“Oh. No, I’ve just studied a great many languages. It’s a hobby.” Ms. Szabo nodded.

 

“Not a bad hobby. I’ve recently taken up learning Mandarin. Got any good tips?”

 

Daniel was off. Languages weren’t his great love, but they probably came in at the top five. Sam looked at Jack and muttered, “What’s with the face, sir?”

 

“Daniel likes her. Figures.” Before Sam could ask what he meant by that, Szabo paused Daniel for a moment.

 

“Is there any way at all I could steal some coffee?” Ah, she had spotted the coffee pot. “I caught the redeye this morning and I had to settle for Starbucks.” Daniel made a sympathetic face.

 

Sam nodded at the auditor. “I’ll go get you a mug, one second.” She was back in more like twelve; she must have grabbed a mug from one of the offices around the conference room. Jack, personally, didn’t have a problem with Starbucks. He was not going to go get the woman a mug.

 

“You are a gem, Major.” After the requisite introduction, and with coffee in hand, the woman turned back to her conversation with Daniel. Jack went back to his report on SG1’s most recent trip; he was trying to remember whether Daniel had gotten the alien equivalent of poison ivy before or after they made contact with the locals when Sam sat down next to him. 

 

“Where is General Hammond, sir? Wasn’t he supposed to be here to give her the truth is out there speech?” Jack looked at the clock. Five minutes past eight; he wouldn’t put it past the man to have left them in a conference room intentionally to make them all a little softer when it came time for the “working together” speech. A sneaky one, was Hammond. But only sometimes. 

 

“Not sure Carter. Haven’t heard anything from him.” Not that he would; with the computers disconnected from the networks so they could be portable, the whole team was in a little digital isolation bubble in the conference room. And Carter knew that. She very pointedly did not roll her eyes at him, but before she could start trying to pin him to an answer, General Hammond opened the door.

 

“Everyone. It’s a pleasure. I hope you’ve been introduced. This is Ms. Szabo, from the Inspector General’s Office. Ms. Szabo, I am General Hammond; we spoke on the phone.” She nodded. “First thing’s first, Ms. Szabo. You’ll want to sit down for this.”

\-------------

Okay. Aliens. 

 

_I’m going to kill Christopher, the jerk. I can’t believe he knew about aliens and he didn’t tell me._

 

I took a deep breath, looked down at my coffee, and blinked. “Did you use something alien to make the coffee? I’ve never had a cup so good.” Don’t get me wrong; the only reason I wasn’t jumping and screaming for absolute joy was the fact that I was here representing an agency. That, and I thought if I made too much noise about it they might not let me back and I gotta say. I needed to be here. Aliens! My mind was one of those keysmashes at the moment. And the X-files tune was playing. And okay, a lot of the aliens were trying to enslave us and take over our bodies a la Yeerk, but you take what you can get. 

 

“No, we just always buy the good stuff.” Daniel pushed his glasses up his nose and looked at me. Fine. Keep your coffee secrets. Just give up all the alien ones.

 

General Hammond kept talking. “The reason we’re telling you this, Ms. Szabo, is because the NID has been trying to lobby in Congress for the program to have a permanent oversight position. Normally, this would be a paper report for the IG to issue in complete secrecy, but we’re looking for something a little more long term, to hold off the vultures.” And if they got independent oversight unbeholden to the NID, they could point at me and say “Look. We already have someone looking over our shoulder.” I realized that this meant they had done background checks on me already, and dismissed the thought out of hand. You lose your worry over that kind of thing, after you’ve held a clearance long enough. 

 

I frowned to myself, looking down at the table. The position was dancing close to the line of political favoritism; even the appearance of an auditor who bowed to political favor one way or another damaged credibility. That would be a fine edge to walk, regardless of whether it was me or someone else. But who was I kidding. I was jumping on this. Now. 

 

“General, I-“

 

“Before you tell me anything, I need to make a few things clear. I have SG-1 in here to give you an idea of what life can be like on this base. There’s a reason we all make hazard pay. In addition, Ms. Szabo, we have a standard trial period for all of our civilians in the mountain. I understand that you’re not our employee, but you’ll be working with us and around us, so you’ll go through the same process.”

 

Okay, fair. Not the norm, but most government employees went through a probationary period at the beginning of their employment where they could, in theory, be fired with little justification. Of course, in real life, that only happened if they murdered their supervisor, and even then they might get off with a PIP. 

 

This must be the same, but going both directions. 

 

“How long is the probationary period?” 

 

“We’re playing it by ear.” Alright, thanks General. That could mean anything. Given the look in the Colonel’s eye right now, it could mean until a brief hazing period was over. Given I would be getting hazard pay, it could be until they decided I wouldn’t be a liability in a crisis. Should be interesting.

 

Before I could say anything else – probably a good thing, because I was still a little too thrilled by the alien thing to have much dignity – the General looked down at his watch and nodded to the Colonel. “I’ll be leaving you in SG1’s capable hands, Ms. Szabo. They’ll tell you a little more about what you’re getting into. If, at any point, you don’t want to complete the assignment, we will send you home with hard feelings and no reflections on you or your agency.” He nodded to the room in general – ha, general – and left the room. And left me to the tender mercy of his flag team. Good thing I had some decent coffee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah so hey, definitely late. But work is stupid again, so you'll probably get some more chapters coming up sooner ish. Who knows. All good. Still hate formatting. Leave a comment on your way out.


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